ByPeter Rainer, Film criticJuly 16, 2010

Lance Daly’s “Kisses” is a marginally sweet movie about two woebegone Irish kids, Kylie amd Dylan (played by Kelly O’Neill and Shane Curry), who flee their violent, poverty-row families and run away to Dublin. There they encounter scruffy street musicians and con artists and thugs, and yet the mood is somewhat idyllic.

The film begins in black and white but fades to color in the Dublin scenes. This is a rather literal-minded but surprisingly effective rendition of the kids’ predicament, perhaps because it’s in keeping with the rest of the film’s whimsical, vaguely, magical-realist mood. O’Neill and Curry, both heretofore nonactors, can’t put across much more than a single emotion at a time, but their amateurishness isn’t as annoying as it might have been in a movie with higher aspirations and artistry. Grade: B- (Unrated.)